What are patients' priorities for palliative care research? -- a questionnaire study.

This paper describes the questionnaire component of a two-stage study to examine the research priorities of palliative care patients. In the first stage focus groups were conducted to determine a list of priorities for future research: a questionnaire created from these themes was then used in five hospices across East Anglia. Patients thought that the focus group priorities were important and scored research into emergency care, pain control and helping doctors to understand what patients were saying as most important. Differences in priority were associated with gender, age and in-patient versus day therapy patients.